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Pollution and Chinese food

MARK COLVIN: To quote a Reuters report from yesterday: "the rotting bodies of about 6,000 pigs in a river that supplies tap water to Shanghai have drawn attention to an ugly truth - China's pig farms are often riddled with disease and one way or another, sick animals often end up in the food chain".

It's yet more evidence that the environment is at the forefront of China's problems, and that means food as well as air and water.

As the first westerner to train at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine, Fuchsia Dunlop is recognised as the foremost western authority on Chinese food.

I began by asking her about the problem of pollution in China's water supply.

FUCHSIA DUNLOP: Yes, and a lot of, and people who can afford it will have filtered or purified water, but of course most people can't afford it.

MARK COLVIN: The water that irrigates rice paddies, the water that grows the green vegetables - that must be a worry too.

FUCHSIA DUNLOP: Yes it is, and there have been again alarming stories about contamination. I mean, just one I remember of tea leaves with heavy metals and also of food crops, yep, very serious problems in many parts of the country.

MARK COLVIN: And the other problem of water is there is such a need for it that they've created these massive dams. How much agricultural land has that taken?

FUCHSIA DUNLOP: Well, with the Three Gorges, you know vast numbers of people were displaced and agricultural land was flooded, but I think that a lot of land has also been lost to development.

I mean, you can see that all round the cities. Farms I've visited with chefs who've been trying to source local produce have been paved over and covered in villas.

There's one restaurateur I know in Hangzhou who is trying to source what we would call organic, sustainable produce and artisanal foods from his surrounding area, and he and his team are having to go further and further into the countryside because of pollution and because of development.

But all around, the cities have all expanded. A pickle maker I know in Szechuan who makes the famous pickled chillies that are the basis of so many local dishes, he took me once to a market in chilli harvest season and this whole area which was producing a particular kind of chilli which goes into the famous pickles has now been lost to development, and he was not sure whether, where he would be able to source his raw ingredients.

So these are anecdotal stories, but it's part of a bigger picture of massive loss of agricultural land.

MARK COLVIN: It's fascinating though, isn't it, because you've got two opposing forces there. On the one hand, you've got the pollution and the development and all that; on the other, you've got the growth of a middle class which is funding chefs who are interested in local sourcing and all those things that are growing in the west as well.

FUCHSIA DUNLOP: Yes. I mean I would say that in terms of the movement of chefs, China has a long history of people being obsessed with the provenance of their ingredients.

So the best ham coming from Jinhua or from Yunan; the best fruits coming from such-and-such a place, and so on. So they have this very rich culture, but a lot of it has been sort of muddied by industrialisation and so on.

And now, although on restaurant menus people will often say that they have this particular organic chicken from such-and-such a place and so on, people don't really trust their providers. There's a lot of puff about it.

I don't think there are that many chefs yet who are pursuing uncontaminated artisanal produce with the same seriousness as Dai Jianjun, this man in Hangzhou.

But for the middle classes certainly, that's what they would like to eat, and there are actually, you know, there are farms around Beijing which are growing safe, organic produce for the people who can afford it and for officials, and this has been a bit of a sensitive issue.

MARK COLVIN: With water pollution, heavy metals and so on, I mean if you are served prawns in China, what level of trust do you have in the prawns?

FUCHSIA DUNLOP: Well, I prefer not to think about it.

(Laughter)

I mean, in my line of research, I am going around China tasting things for ethnographic cultural and social reasons, and so I do eat everything.

But certainly, again, there have been lots of ugly stories in the press about fish farming and prawn farming. I think anywhere there are lots of dubious drugs used in fish farming and the farming of prawns.

So yeah, I prefer not to think about it.

If I was living in China permanently, when I spend long periods of time there, then I do try to do as my Chinese friends do and eat more vegetables, eat less of foods that are likely, more likely to be contaminated.

MARK COLVIN: And adulteration. Has the government started to get a handle on that, or do you think adulteration problems are still going on?

FUCHSIA DUNLOP: They're absolutely still going on. I think it's an inevitable part of development, that you've gone from a society where 20 years ago, nearly 20 years ago when I lived in Szechuan, where everyone bought their produce fresh from the markets. It was grown locally. There was a very short food chain. There were no supermarkets to speak of at that time.

Now, you have more and more manufactured foods, heavily processed foods. There are more foods being brought from abroad and from other parts of China to certain areas. And so in any country where you have rapid industrialisation and the sudden lengthening of the food chain before you have a system of regulation fit to cope with it, you have all these problems.

MARK COLVIN: Any glimpses of hope? Any rays of light?

FUCHSIA DUNLOP: Well, I would hope that in China you have a country that is really obsessed with food and that has an ancient history of taking food seriously as being the basis of health, happiness and even society and human interaction.

And so one would hope that China would be in a better position culturally to start addressing these problems and has a fantastic resource of eating for health and of sustainable ideas about agriculture and food to draw on as they try to address these very pressing modern concerns.

MARK COLVIN: Fuchsia Dunlop, whose latest book is called Every Grain of Rice.